This is essentially a play about being black under
apartheid in South Africa. A young
man who used to work in a Ford
factory has set himself up as a freelance
photographer in his own studio in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The play is in part
reenactments of his memories, and in part is dramatization of one other man's
experience who comes in to have his picture taken and sent home to his wife and
children in King Williamstown, back in the countryside. The man is Sizwe Bansi, of the
title. He does not have a stamp in his passbook to stay in town and look for work. He
and a companion come across a dead man in the street, who DOES have the proper
stamps. His friend suggests that they switch names and passbooks, so he can work
and send money to his family. The man resists the suggestion, but finally accedes. It is
better, he thinks, to lose his name, and his pride, than to go home and watch his family
do without. He goes to the photography studio to get a picture made and a letter written
to his wife to tell her the true state of things.
This play is not only something of an eye-opening; it is heartrending. You see what it was like to have been black under
apartheid. Fugard was a white South African playwright. He said he acted as a "scribe" to the improvisations of his two actor-cowriters, who are black members of the Serpent Players, a South African theatre group.